Low Calorie Bacon

I’ve been paying a bit more attention to what I eat recently and, for the first time ever, I have started reading the nutrition labels to see how many calories there are in stuff I like.

The most surprising thing?

The things I like don’t have that many calories.

I don’t really like cookies or cakes or sweets or candies or pies or chips or any of the things that a) have lots of calories and b) most people struggle with when they are on a diet. Conversely, the things I like – even the things, like bacon, that are notoriously to be avoided when slimming – are not that bad.

Food

kCal

Bacon

37

Eggs

70

Olive oil

119

So my bacon and egg fry up has less calories than your healthy bagel and that’s before you put your healthy cream cheese on it!

I have no interest in bread or noodles or rice. I only ever ate them out of some cultural obligation to society. One less teaspoon of sugar in my tea is no sacrifice (i tried going completely without…yuck!) and it earns me the right to my one calorific pleasure:

Beer

150

I don’t know why people think it is hard to lose weight. Just stop eating the stuff you don’t really like.

“I only ever ate them out of some cultural obligation to society.” I think cultural obligations are the biggest obstacle to losing weight. See Mindless Eating for the influence of our surroundings on what we eat.

since it came up in the comments, the notion of lowering cholesterol as a means of improving health is apparently itself scientifically dubious. of course, once the AHA et alia decide to make it the cornerstone of their marketing campaigns (forty odd years ago), it’s hard to back away, even in light of contradictory studies.

mostly it turns out nutrition is subject to the same sorts of paradigm driven normal science that affect its peers. do with that what you will – esp. eating bacon.

no citations immediately at hand, but that’s why we have the internet.